38 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



Remains only Daphne Mezereon, our sweet rare native. 

 In almost every cottage-garden in March you will see the 

 bare, leafless twigs of the Mezereon clothed along their 

 length with its big magenta flowers, armed with a 

 fragrance keen, sugared, bitter, curiously ominous of the 

 malevolent poison lurking in the whole plant, and con- 

 centrated in the glossy scarlet berries that succeed the 

 bloom. Though rather capricious, the Mezereon, in its 

 typical and its white form, is to be found all over Eng- 

 land, naturalised, even, in wood and coppice, while on 

 the upper Alpine meadows it abounds. There is only 

 one spot, in our islands, however, which claims to possess 

 it as undisputed native. Ling Ghyll is a narrow, deep 

 gully, cloven abruptly between the fells at the back of 

 Ingleborough. Its steep sides are clothed from top to 

 dim, wooded, water-haunted bottom, with bushes of the 

 Mezereon, which no external agency can well have 

 introduced to a spot so remote from man, so utterly 

 lonely in the wild heart of the hill country. Another 

 speciality of this strange, magical glen was Saxifraga 

 umbrosa, also claiming this for its only genuine station as 

 a wild plant in Great Britain. Alas, the London Pride 

 has disappeared for many years now; they say that 

 incursions from Giggleswick were fatal to it. But the 

 stubborn wood and fibre of the Daphnes will resist any- 

 thing short of pick-axe and dynamite. As for me, I 

 confess that I love this Daphne better in Ling Ghyll 

 than in my gardens, where its colour vexes me, and its 

 heady, evil fragrance troubles me with obscure terrors. 



And now comes the lesser fry of flowering evergreens. 

 Let me not, though, rashly apply such an epithet to 

 Cistus, noble race, which, however, is not for the most 

 part enthusiastic about my garden. Let others, in hotter, 

 sunnier, sandy climes, run riot with aispifoUiis, salvifolius, 

 formosiis, algarvensis, corbariensis, undulatiis, ladaniferus. 



